New York City Serenade
by dream vs nightmare
Summary: Emma Swan lives a pretty normal life in Manhattan. Sure, she might dream of a stranger with startling blue eyes and an accent you wouldn't soon forget, but other than that, life with her son is totally normal. Or at least, it is until said stranger shows up on her doorstep. Emma/Graham AU.


_Or, the one where Graham (isn't dead and) comes to Manhattan to try and convince Emma to come back to Storybrooke with him. Things don't exactly go as planned, but. Perhaps there's more to come._

**Disclaimer**: _If I owned Once Upon A Time, Graham never would've died and Gremma would be as canon as Snowing, okay? Okay._

* * *

Blue, Emma thought as she slid a steaming mug of hot cocoa across the table to her son. Or were they green? Her eyebrows furrowed as she tried to remember the exact shade of the stranger's eyes as she'd seen them in her dream - and her face contorted even further when she realized that somehow, he wasn't a stranger.

"Mom, you forgot something." Henry said as he looked up into her face. She was doing it again. Thinking too hard, getting lost in thoughts that didn't quite connect...but Henry always brought her back to where she needed to be: the here and now.

The fog of her dream lifting, she snapped her fingers and murmured, "Right! Cinnamon" before moving to grab the little tin of it from off the counter.

"Here you go." He smiled at her as she handed it to him and she thought, this was all she needed. Her and her son sitting down to eat breakfast together, like they had done every morning for...well, as long as she could remember.

The two sprinkled cinnamon on their drinks, made white by the cover of whipped cream, before clinking their mugs against each other's in a toast. To them, to the morning, to the life they had.

And what a life it was. While she'd say it was close to perfect, sometimes, she couldn't help but feel like something was missing. Her eyes flickered over to the space where Neal should've been sitting and it was all she could do to smile at her son as he looked to the same spot. Because that's where he _would_ be, and _should_ be. But he wasn't. Her thoughts drifted as they always did, never quite settling on Neal himself, but more of what he'd left behind. How his laugh was hidden within the depth's of Henry's, how his wedding ring glinted in the light when he'd move to cup her face (she couldn't cremate it with him, she couldn't), how a soft-spoken Henry had told his class all about how _cool_ and _brave_ his dad had been.

Sometimes this feeling of emptiness, of _wrongness_, would creep up on her if she thought too long about life before Neal. It did then, a hum of static in her ears and shivers down her back. Though it hadn't for a long time, sometimes the wrongness of it all ate away at her, got too much, too strong, and she'd black out in the middle of what she was doing. And for the third time this week she wondered if the feeling would slip into the background if Neal was here to mute it. If he was here to quiet it like he always had.

A light knock on the door brought Emma out of her reverie, and Henry's gaze moved to hers. "Is anyone coming over?"

"No..."

The knock came again, a touch louder this time. She was reminded of another time, when soft eyes and hard words (there was an incident...we're not sure of that right now...but your husband's, well he's...) greeted her. And she couldn't let Henry lose someone he loved, not again, not like this, not when everything was going so well for them, now. "Henry, wait here."

He nodded and resumed cutting up his pancakes as she got up from the table and headed over to the door, turning off the stereo as she went. _Charlie's Girl _had always been one of Neal's favorites, and though she tried not to think about it, they used to spend long afternoons dancing around the apartment to it before...there it was again. The wrongness, the uncertainty of before.

She unlocked the deadbolt and swung the door open, all thoughts of her late husband fading from her mind the moment she saw who was standing on the other side of it.

Him.

The literal man of her dreams.

"Emma." He said around a smile. The skin beneath her bracelet warmed as she looked up into his face. His eyes were blue with flecks of grey, the sky right before a storm, and something in her broke. Shattered. Screamed.

Because somehow, someway. She knew he wasn't supposed to be here. And the wrongness of the moment returned, but the static wasn't so subtle. It drown out every thought in her head because he _wasn't supposed to be here._

He moved to take another step closer, murmuring, "I'm sorry I-"

But she cut him off. Couldn't take it if he kept talking in that soft, lilting voice. "Woah, do I know you?"

"I feel like we've met before. Maybe at the park, a Starbucks?" Her eyes darkened as they pleaded with him to say no, they'd never met before. She couldn't shake this feeling that they had, and she wanted him to prove her wrong.

He dipped his head closer to her but didn't make another move toward her when he said, "I know you're not going to believe me."

"Not going to believe what?" She raised an eyebrow at him.

"My explanation as to why I have this." He said as he brought his hands out from behind his back.

A laugh left her lips when she saw what he was holding - Henry's book of fairy tales. "You're a life saver! I've been looking for that all over - where did you find it?"

"I found it laying open on a park bench as you and your boy headed back home."

"Ah, observant." She said around a smile that felt far too easy.

"Important for a cop." He added, smiling right back. And her pulse point ached beneath the leather of her bracelet because...because what?

"Well, I imagine it's good for our tourist business, but bad for our local signage."

He furrowed his eyebrows at her.

"It...it's a joke. Because you got mud all over my welcome sign?" She pointed to the mat that lay between them and dammit, he gave her that grin again. Those shattered pieces of her splintered even further. Because he wasn't supposed to do that. He wasn't supposed to be able to do that.

"Well. I do apologize about the sign. And ah...I hope you enjoy your book, Miss Swan." He said as he walked backwards down the hall, watching her as he did - and it was only when he was almost out of sight that the fog, _the total wrongness of him being here, _lifted enough for her to realize something.

"Hey, wait! I didn't get your name!"

"Sheriff Humbert." She could see him smiling even from here and it stirred a funny feeling in her stomach. "But you can call me Graham."

Emma closed the door behind her once he was gone. She walked back down the hall with Henry's book in her hands and set it down on the table next to his now-empty plate. His gaze passed back and forth from the book to the door, eyes alit with wonder and something else she couldn't place.

"Did he...did he give this back to you?"

She nodded, the ghost of a smile on her face as she moved to sit across from him. "Yeah, he did. Seems like a really nice guy."

That something in his eyes disappeared at her words, replaced by clear concern.

"Are you feeling okay?" He raised an eyebrow at her and leaned over their plates to place his hand on her forehead. "You're kinda warm, Mom. Maybe you're coming down with something."

She rolled her eyes at him but couldn't quite manage to keep herself from smiling - for real, this time. "What? Just because I say a guy seems really nice?"

"That's it, I'm calling Walsh to tell him you can't make it to dinner tonight. You are _definitely _under the weather." He got up as though to go get the cordless phone off its cradle on the counter when it started to ring.

His eyes narrowed as he scanned the caller ID. "Oh, hey, it's him, now."

She joined him at the counter and reached for the phone, pressing a kiss to his forehead as she did. "I'll see you after school, 'kay?"

"'Kay." He kissed her cheek before walking out to the living room to go grab his backpack. She saw him off to school just as Walsh murmured a low, "Hey, baby. Are we still on for dinner tonight?"

Her thoughts strayed to the kind sheriff with the lilting accent, lingering on the way his laugh touched his eyes. But all thoughts of him drifted away when she heard her boyfriend whisper, "I was thinking I could have you for dessert" in a way that made a shiver dance down her spine.

"Yeah, we're still on for dinner. And we'll see about dessert."

She woke up from a nap she didn't remember taking and got dressed for dinner just as the sun kissed the top of the high-rise apartments that surrounded hers. Her mind lingered on the set of his lips and the tear on his cheek as he leaned forward to - her eyebrows furrowed again. As he leaned forward to what?

That was always when she woke up - and this time was no different. She sometimes dreamt of Neal, and even Jake...but never Walsh. And certainly not like - warmth pooled in her stomach when she remembered how he'd looked at her just before they kissed - _that_. He said he'd remembered. But what did he remember?

And why couldn't _she_ remember?

She did her best to push the thought away as she shrugged on her favorite red coat over her dress. It didn't matter. He was just some guy who'd returned her son's book - whatever he may or may not have remembered was none of her business. Besides, she had a date with an incredible guy tonight; an incredible guy she happened to call her boyfriend.

What she felt for him was real. This other guy, this Graham, maybe he was just...

Not important, she reminded herself once more as she got into her little yellow VW Bug and headed to the restaurant. Henry had left a note for her on the kitchen counter that she'd glanced over as she'd left their apartment - it said he'd gone over Nick's house after school and had planned on staying the night. Though she'd never heard of the place where her and Walsh were eating tonight, she thought that knowing him, the restaurant was going to be wildly expensive and lavishly not her style.

Dinner always came with a price, and as the straps of her high heels gave her one blister after another as she walked, she had a feeling that she was just beginning to pay up.

God, she hated heels...

As Emma walked into the lounge and shrugged off her coat, she wasn't sure if she wanted to kick or congratulate herself. Her thoughts hadn't strayed to the sheriff from this afternoon in almost an hour. Never-mind that he knew her name before she'd ever thought of giving it, or looked at her with eyes that were as new as they were achingly familiar. Never-mind that she'd dreamt of him with such clarity that she was beginning to wonder if they'd met in...

It didn't matter. Looking about the restaurant seemed to soothe some of the worry that gnawed at her before. The bistro was cushy, sure, but nowhere near as lavish as she'd been expecting. Strange, though, that there wasn't any music playing over the speakers - just static. She shrugged it off as her gaze fell across the tables before her, eyes scanning the place for Walsh as he inevitably did the same.

They smiled when they spotted each other, and he rose from his chair as she walked over to their table. "Hey."

"Sorry I'm late," She murmured, draping her coat over the back of the chair before moving into the circle of his arms.

"I'm guessin' that means ya caught the guy." He said around a smile, cupping either side of her face as he leaned forward to give her a quick kiss - had he lingered any longer, she was sure it would've given her butterflies.

"So optimistic - I like it." She smiled back at him as they moved to sit in their seats, him murmuring, "And if you hadn't, you woulda canceled" all the while.

"And you know me too well." Emma said as she settled into her chair.

"Emma Swan always gets her man." Walsh said as he settled into his.

A waiter walked by their table, handing her a glass of wine as he went. She grinned at her boyfriend and added, "and apparently, my drink" before thanking the waiter as he left to check on the surrounding tables. And Walsh, ever the gentleman, thanked him as well.

"Hey, how'd Henry's volcano do at the science fair?" He asked as they took up their wine glasses - she figured he must've gotten his before she arrived.

"It was Pompeii all over again. Thank you for your help." They clinked their glasses together.

"Come on, all I did was convince him not to use real lava." Walsh murmured over the rim of his glass as he brought it to his lips.

Both sipped at their wine for a moment before Emma set her glass down. "His teachers did appreciate that."

She took up her menu faster than he, smiling a bit. "Let's eat, I'm starving!"

And she really was - deciding to run on a bearclaw and a mug of Granny's coffee all day probably wasn't the best decision she'd made all day, but what could she say? The cafe was the closest place to where she worked, and they didn't start serving lunch until long after she was supposed to be in.

"Let's do it." He agreed as he, too, took up his menu.

They talked of things over their meals, everything from the movie they'd curled up on his couch to watch the week before to the way Henry was progressing in his classes. And she thought, this was how it should be. Her and him and Henry. But as she took one last bite of her steak, _he _slipped into her head again. And everything felt all wrong again, completely and totally wrong.

"You happy?"

What?

Emma tilted her head to the side and raised an eyebrow at Walsh's question. How was she supposed to answer that when a stranger occupied her thoughts a hell of a lot more than he did? How was she supposed to answer that question when her name never sounded right in his mouth, not when he was whispering it over the phone or against her lips in between kisses?

"With your food, ya happy?" He gestured to her near-empty plate as guilt stabbed through her - because there she was, thinking of the sheriff from this afternoon again. But she told him that she was beyond happy anyway. And it wasn't a lie. ...Not really, anyway.

Her hand drifted to the tablecloth as she relinquished her fork and finished her meal. Nothing said between them, he took her fingers in his as they started to shake. It was a small thing he did for her, always has, to calm the storm. And then he did something more, giving her the brilliant smile she'd fallen for in the first place.

"I'll be right back." He murmured, parting his fingers from hers before standing up to head to the inner part of the restaurant.

"Okay."

He winked at her as he left, and she drew out her phone out of her coat pocket to check her emails once he'd gone. A waitress cleared their plates away in the meantime, and she thanked her briefly before turning her gaze back to her phone. She had a message from Jack about their latest case, and she moved to type a reply just as Walsh slid back into his seat.

"Hang on, I'm just gonna finish this quick work thing."

Her eyes widened when she looked up to find that it wasn't her boyfriend who sat in the seat across from her, but the man who'd been on her mind all afternoon.

"Graham."

"I can explain, truly." He said as he raised his hands up in defense. "You were going to get a parking ticket, and I wanted to tell you in time so you could move your Volkswagen."

"How...how do you know what my car looks like?" Though her voice didn't waver, her knees shook under the table. "We just met earlier today."

"I know what this looks like." He said as he blew air from his lips and shook his head. "This looks like I'm some crazy stalker from a bad horror film, yeah?"

She nodded. "Yeah, you're right on that."

"But hear me out, first. I need...I need to talk to you." He cast his eyes around the room before meeting her gaze once more. "You were right before, we do know each other. And I think I have something of yours."

She raised an eyebrow at that. "Of mine? What, did I leave a scarf on that park bench, too?"

"Oh, that you did." He said around a smile that had her heart leaping against her chest in a way that Walsh's didn't.

"I can't stay long. And I know I shouldn't have crashed your date, and for that I'm sorry." He leaned forward to look her full in the face, his eyes glimmering under the lights that twinkled around the table. "Truly."

They're blue, she thought as she too leaned forward. And it didn't matter that she'd dreamt of them, of him, a hundred times over. It didn't matter that she found herself thinking of him more and more often as time went by. It didn't even matter that she'd dreamt of him as he was now, looking at her with the most open expression she'd ever seen on someone's face.

Because she couldn't trust him.

And she told him as much, murmuring, "Look. I want to believe you. I do."

"But you've still got that wall around your heart, huh?" His voice became as deep and dark as the night outside, and she shivered from the crown of her head down to the tips of her toes.

His words nearly knocked the breath out of her - how did he know something like that? She could only think of one way, one possibility. And even though it hurt to ask, she needed to know.

"Did you know my husband?"

He bit his lip and looked away from her. Static seemed to hang in the air, spreading and stretching as the silence wore on.

"Look at me. Did you know him?" He did as she said, and she found herself relaxing - but only minutely.

"You could say that." His fingers dipped inside his jacket pocket, tugging a small square of paper out before sliding it across the table to her. The hair on the back of her neck stood up, though she couldn't place why. This split second between them seemed...right. Beneath the static and the nervous tapping of her foot and the way her wrist burns with the weight of her bracelet, there was something about this moment that felt so _real._

"I know that you're confused about who you are." He murmured as he gestured to the tables around them before his eyes met hers once more. "About all this, too. So I'm going to tell you. If you want to know about who you are, and where you're really from, come to this address."

Who she is. Where she's really from. There was a part of her that wanted to punch back and say, no, this is who she is, and this is where she's from. But she couldn't bring herself to push the words, heavy and half-true, passed her lips.

"How do I know I can trust you?"

He gave her that smile again. "Look into my eyes. Use your superpower, see if I'm being honest with you."

There it was again – him knowing a little fact about herself she'd never given. Emma looked into his eyes in challenge, then, asking every deity she knew of to show her that he was lying. But she saw no trickery in the depths of his eyes, so blue she had to wonder if they'd been made out of the sky and the sea just before the light of dawn.

And damn it all to hell, she took the offered slip of paper.

"Just because you believe something doesn't make it true. And you're lying." She told him as she settled back into her chair. Lying came naturally to her, herself, but she found it hard to push the words out of her mouth around this guy.

"Am I?" Graham tilted his head to the side, grinning in a way that said he knew.

"Come find out." He murmured as he moved to get up from the table. He added a soft, "Come find me" over his shoulder as he disappeared inside the depths of the restaurant and out of her line of sight. Her gaze never wandered from his retreating figure, even when Walsh returned to take his place.

It wasn't enough. Or maybe _he_ wasn't enough. The conversation, the dessert, the sudden proposal...none of it felt _right_. Everything just seemed off. And she had to wonder - when was the last time things didn't feel just a touch surreal?

The realization that she couldn't remember when life felt normal, felt _solid,_ had her walking to her VW bug faster than Walsh could keep up with. Rain splattered onto the window-shield as she drove away, and she didn't bother glancing back at her boyfriend's watery figure in the rearview mirror. She didn't need to - her speedy exit said everything she didn't have to.

It would never work. _They_ would never work. Her thoughts strayed to the kind sheriff with the lilting voice, and then the soft-spoken fireman who never really left her mind. If Neal were here, he'd tell her to go for it. He'd tell her to figure things out. And he'd tell her to do what felt right.

"If you're leading me down a rabbit hole, Neal Cassidy..." She muttered to herself as her free hand wrapped around the pendant he'd given her.

Somehow, someway, she got the feeling that he wasn't. And that was enough for her, for now.


End file.
